Fitness: The secret to looking good in middle age

Jillian Michaels, 46, is the queen of midlife fitness. After almost two decades at the top of an industry renowned for fads and fallacies, she insists on old-fashioned calorie counting

Jillian Michaels has no time for hot yoga — “Why would anyone think it is a good thing? It just leaves you dehydrated” — or elaborate detox plans. Picture: Mediahombre

If a fitness trainer were to be crowned queen, then Jillian Michaels would be a leading contender.

In many minds, Michaels already reigns supreme as a guru whose no-nonsense approach is a magnet for those tired of trying — and failing — with fitness fads that promise rapid weight loss and an instantly flat stomach.

She has 3.1 million followers on Facebook, 1.6 million on Twitter and 1.3 million on Instagram, and her website clocks up 22,000 daily page-views.

She has sold 100 million fitness DVDs, has a string of New York Times bestselling books to her name and her podcast, The Jillian Michaels Show, is ranked top in the US iTunes health podcast charts.

During lockdown there has been a 25 per cent increase in users of her app, which has more than three million downloads.

“Everyone wants to get rid of the quarantine 15,” she says of the extra pounds that lockdown may have added. “And it is absolutely possible.”

Michaels, 46, was born and bred in Los Angeles — she now lives in a house overlooking Malibu beach with her fashion designer partner and two children — and stumbled into fitness training via an unconventional route.

“I was an overweight kid and used food for a host of emotional reasons,” she says. “My mum got me into martial arts at around the age of 13 and over time I began to appreciate fitness as a means of empowerment.”

She also showed a distinct aptitude for it. She got her karate black belt at 17 and began to get requests to train people.

“I spent the next few years couch surfing, living out of my car and delivering pizzas until I got into personal training,” she says.

A brief sojourn in a nine-to-five job in her mid-twenties made her “the most miserable I have ever been” so she left, got back into training and, by 30, had landed the role of fitness expert on NBC’s The Biggest Loser.

Her 15 seasons on the show — in which contestants competed for dramatic weight loss transformations week after week — catapulted Michaels into the world of the A-list fitterati.

She has since worked with celebrities including Julia Roberts and Pink, but it is the hundreds of thousands who follow her social media workouts — and who hang on her every word about losing kilos and achieving a toned core — that she counts as her most important clients. After almost two decades at the top of an industry renowned for its fads and fallacies, she is convinced that her longevity boils down to her steadfast opposition to following the latest diet or workout trend.

By her admission, she is outspoken to the point of being branded controversial — critics slammed Michaels as “fatphobic” after she told Women’s Health magazine last year that “obesity in itself is not something that should be glamourised” — but she makes no excuses for setting out to bust the many misconceptions that circulate in her world.

Michaels has no time for hot yoga — “Why would anyone think it is a good thing? It just leaves you dehydrated” — or elaborate detox plans.

“There are always new things on the scene, but my question is whether there is science behind them, whether they are rooted in biochemistry and stand up to scrutiny,” she says.

“Diets and workouts are tweaked and reinvented, but the basic science of weight loss hasn’t changed.”

She insists that nothing replaces good old-fashioned calorie counting.

“There is no escaping the scientific law of thermodynamics,” she says.

“If you eat more calories than your body is burning off, they will get stored as fat. It isn’t my theory or anyone else’s, it is just proven fact.”

Diet and exercise are too often overcomplicated, she says, but the key to losing weight and getting fitter is surprisingly simple.

“If you google your basal metabolic rate, or the amount of calories you need just to stay alive, you can then work out how many more you need for daily activities,” she says.

“I am 5ft 2in (157cm) and need about 1700 calories a day to maintain my weight, which I get from three meals of around 500 calories and a couple of snacks.”

She says that allowing a 12-hour gap between eating dinner and then eating breakfast the following day can prove to be helpful in stabilising blood sugar and preventing overeating, and the quality of food that you eat will influence your hunger hormones and health.

She has a similarly uncompromising message for fitness.

“There is no single workout that is the answer,” she says. “If you are in a hurry to lose weight, then you need a combination of resistance work, HIIT (high-intensity interval training), plyometrics and metabolic circuits with no rest between sets, but if you are prepared for a slower process then running and yoga can work too.”

What’s essential, she says, is variety.

“Your body will adapt quite quickly to an activity and intensity so you need to mix things up,” she says.

“If you are a runner then three times a week make it an HIIT or incline run, and add other modalities of fitness incorporating strength and flexibility work.”

She says that anyone can improve their physique with consistent commitment and the right mix. “Doing the same thing will just lead to overuse injuries and a lack of progress,” she says.

“Strength and cardio in the right combination provide the stressors and recovery your body needs to produce results.”

JILLIAN’S THREE KILLER MOVES

There are a few key moves, each with variations, that are the basics of a good strength routine. I wouldn’t recommend doing only these exercises, but use them as a base from which to develop. Perform each for 30 seconds in swift succession and do four rounds per workout. Repeat that four days a week. On up to the other three days try to do some cardio for 30-60 minutes.

 

Push-ups

A lot of people can’t do these straight off, so start by doing them against the back of your sofa until you are strong enough to do them on the floor. After that, walk-out push-ups are a good progression. Stand up and keep your legs as straight as possible, bend forward and walk your hands out into a high plank. Perform a push-up, then walk your hands back to standing.

 

Squats

There are hundreds of variations of the squat — squat jumps, side squats — all are fantastic. Put some books in a backpack, hold out in front of you to simulate weights and squat with that. Bend your knees, exhale and hinge forward at the hips, sitting back. Aim to get your thighs parallel to floor.

 

Lunges

Start with stationary lunges and progress to backward and walking, jump and pendulum lunges. To do the pendulum lunge, stand with feet hip-width apart, hands on hips. Step forward into a lunge. Step back and immediately perform a rear lunge with the same leg, then change sides.

The Times